No Gain, Continued Pain for Housing

Homebuilders' stocks price in a return to normalcy next year; wait 'til 2014.

THE SURPRISE ABOUT THE LATEST BATCH of rotten housing data is that anybody is surprised.

New home sales plunged 11% in January, to a record-low annual selling rate of 309,000, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. That did, however, come as a bit of a shock to the consensus of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, who bravely forecast a 3.5%...